Jaguar Land Rover intends to make electric cars in UK

The I-Pace will be built by contract manufacturer Magna Steyr's factory in Austria, Jaguar Land Rover CEO Ralf Speth told Automotive News Europe.

JLR, owned by India's Tata Motors, showcased its first electric auto, the Jaguar I-PACE, at the Los Angeles motor show last week.

Dr Speth told an industry meeting it wants to build electric vehicles in the West Midlands.

According to the same source, the move could also create approximately 100.000 jobs in the Midlands region, all thanks to the suppliers in the area that would have to ramp up their operations to handle Jaguar Land Rover's needs.

But JLR said the ambition was "dependent on overcoming infrastructure and capacity issues". Interestingly, the company touted the I-Pace as a concept auto.

The company now manufactures a little less than one-third of the total 1.6 million cars in Britain past year and it has already showcased their first electric vehicle based on the F-Pace SUV. Both the Jaguar I-PACE Concept and the Land Rover Discovery are revolutionary vehicles and major innovations in each of their segments, sharing our compelling combination of iconic British design and creative engineering.

If Jaguar Land Rover goes ahead with the United Kingdom plans, it would create about 7,500 jobs in the Coventry area through 2020, Yardley said in a telephone interview on Friday, although about 2,500 of those positions would be moved from elsewhere in the country. Why should we challenge ourselves to build more than a million cars? He declined to confirm whether the second model would also be an EV or whether it would be a Land Rover.

The expansion could create around 10,000 positions, said Martin Yardley, chief executive officer of the Coventry & Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership, which promotes the economy in the region where many of Jaguar Land Rover's United Kingdom operations are clustered. Speth wants about half of JLR's model range to feature hybrid or electric variants within five years. Over the past five years Jaguar Land Rover has employed more than 20,000 people, taking its workforce to nearly 40,000.